Off-Nominal - 158 - Meant to F

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Jake and Anthony are back! We catch up mostly about spacesuits, space stations, spaceships, and probably Dragon XL.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 158 - Meant to F - YouTubeNASA will pay SpaceX nearly $1 billion to deorbit the International Space Station | Ars TechnicaDutchSatellites on X: “The USDV that SpaceX offered is indeed based off Dragon XL. By leveraging the technology already under development for Dragon XL, SpaceX was able to keep their offer for the USDV relatively cheap. Never mind the boilerplate language about the launch service: it will launch on FH.”NASA’s commercial spacesuit program just hit a major snag | Ars TechnicaAre NASA, Boeing Starliner Astronauts Really Stranded in Space? - BloombergStarliner return eyed for end of July as tests continue - SpaceNewsAndrew Jones on X: ”Wow. This is apparently what was supposed to be a STATIC FIRE TEST today of a Tianlong-3 first stage by China's Space Pioneer. That's catastrophic, not static. Firm was targeting an orbital launch in the coming months.”Andrew Jones on X: “Drone footage from the Tianlong-3 static fire test and accidental launch emerges.”Follow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine start. Hi, Jake. Hey, man. You could hear me when I was talking to you before the show. I could not. No. Oh, look at that. We were trying to coordinate that we were ready.

I was like, are we ready? And then I was like, I think we're just going to go live. I was like, I was like, I don't know if this is up yet. I'm looking. Something different about my setup here. I don't know what it was. Well, you're on the road. Yeah, yeah.

You're on the road. Yeah, yeah. I'm broadcasting from my mom's house. And you can even see, like this, back here, that's the Jake Robbins, graduation recital poster. Look at that. Wow. Yeah.

That's how you know your mom's. Yeah. Yeah. And another Alberta stuff. You are not hiding out yet. Grizzly bear. Oil Derek. Alberta, baby.

Woo. Let's do it. Could not. Like, you set that up in the background. That's not, that's not legit. I didn't.

I swear to God. Because it's all frame of this. Of this two up, it's off frame, right? And then when you bring it in, it's grizzly bears and oil derricks. It's the best. Literally, literally what this.

room looks like. God, that's so, this is great. 158 episodes in. We're really, those photographs or windows is in the chat. Why is it so big? And they're in the stream. You're just really, really steering up and set up today.

I don't know what I did. Oh, man. Well, since you were gone, I like, I did some, like, clipping of the show, funny moments and people were telling me I'm too TikToky. So I'm trying to reassess our technical setup, Jake. Very TikToky, yeah.

The very YouTube shorts. Yeah. I'm trying some stuff, people, right? We're trying to evolve. We're trying to grow, you know,

ourselves generally. All right. So you've given me the task of updating you on three weeks of what I think are the busiest three weeks of space news that there has been this year. Dude, it's been, it's been busy. Like,

I've been seeing the headlines roll in. I'm trying to like, trying to take time off, but also like, trying to keep up. So it's not like a complete wave of reading when I get back. But, man, there has been a lot of stuff. It's been super busy.

So we're going to attempt to do that, including some review of early off nominee entries is what I'm really excited about. Yeah. What do you got? What do you drink it up there? You're back in the land of craft beers. I am, but I didn't get one today. More so than the beer company. Well, so because I'm going to Ireland next week for my actual vacation.

and I suspect just a little bit of a premonition here. I may have a beer or two when I go to Ireland. And so I'm like, you know what? This week I can probably stand and not like drink a bunch of beer. Right. But I did get one of my favorite liqueurs, which I can't get in Mexico. This is Camerula. This is from South Africa.

I don't know if you know this one. I do not. But it's like a nice little like cream liqueur that you kind of drink. It's this fruit that grows down there. No, it's just, this is straight. This is straight of the bottle. So I guess. I have some friends that are South African and they told me this is like a big deal.

These fruit, these grow on these trees and they like fall off the tree and then they will kind of like ferment on the ground and like animals will literally get drunk off the fruit. Oh, I have heard of this. And someone's like, hey, we can do that too. We're human beings. We're animals, right? And that's what happened. So, yeah, it's kind of like a sweet.

It's a really light, fruity flavor, but it's good. Good stuff. We got We got a beer sponsorship Sort of Sort of a beer sponsorship, Jake I'm sort of a I'm drinking a

Boulevard Brewing Co Space camper Look at this little camper Nice Cosmic Boulevard IPA Where's Boulevard brewing from?

Oh look at that My focus is all screwed up This is like a Midwest beer company Of some regard Right Let's see what town specifically.

Yeah, it is. It is Kansas City, Missouri, because our friends at the Kansas City Royals have a connection to the space camper Boulevard Brewing Company. And they're working together, I guess. And they were like, I bet these people would love to send you beer. So we've got some space camper swag, fresh out of Kansas City. You know, it's been a big, between Ted Lassow and then Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey and everything. I feel like Kansas City is really America's sweetheart in the moment.

It's on the map. Yeah. Yeah. It's on the map. And you're going to specify that on Midwest, because like you say Midwest and like Europeans, like that's bigger than Germany. Like what way you know what this is? Tell us where that's from. Fair. Fair.

So I'm pretty pumped about this. Cool. Yeah. Good can design. Love it. I believe I'm looking at my email thread real quick. I believe, let's see, I asked like who we should shout out at Boulevard.

It was Ali Bush, VP of marketing, who apparently loves our phenomenal branding. She's into it. Because it has a beer bottle on it. I think maybe she was looking for some inspiration and went beer space things and then we are at the top result of that.

I would be surprised if we are the top result of that. You know how easy it is to find space-themed beer labels in a craft brewing environment, man? They're everywhere. You can't spit in a store in like Oregon at a craft beer store without anything its base label. You're right. You're right.

All right, Jake. I'm going to give you the option on where to start, okay? We've got, well, no, screw. We're starting off on ISSD orbit because you go away for five seconds and what makes it back into the headlines and Twitter conversation, the disqualification, the disqualification. the discourse at large is Dragon XL, baby. SpaceX is going to do our with the Ice Station. There is hot debate, Jake, over whether this is or is not Dragon XL inspired or derived.

Which is pretty on brand for Dragon XL if you think about it. I wanted your take on where we were out on the spectrum of Dragon XL. I don't know. Is it actually Dragon XL? I don't know, man. I don't know if it is. I don't. I thought I read something like that that was. like, it's kind of like just dragon with a little bit of extra stuff on it. I'm like, okay, is that what Dragon X-L is or is that just Dragon Plus?

I can, if you want, I can run you through the full life cycle that we all experienced live as this happened. All right, all right, that's good. So, news comes out and everyone's like, the kicker of the news, by the way, is that SpaceX got the contract to build the U.S. de-orbit vehicle. This is

they're going to build the vehicle, ship it to NASA. NASA is going to be in charge of this vehicle. SpaceX is not doing service, services, they're building a vehicle. In the contract, it was like, also, by the way, launch will be awarded later. Okay? So that's seated everyone like, yeah.

That was a very funny part, yeah. Yeah. Because now it's like, well, I guess it's not Starship. First we had to go through everything is Starship. We had to go through that phase, right? But is this Starship? Is not Starship? It is a dragon something or other. Okay. Then there was a whole phase of, it must be

Dragon X-L because Dragon Excel is what you need if you need something that beefy. So then there was this, you ever encountered at Dutch satellites on Twitter? Yeah, yeah. Yes, appears to be somebody who knows people and has some good intel. Yeah, an anonymous connected account, yeah. Yeah, also going to circle back on this account later because there's been some Starliner media gripes about this.

But they tweeted, whoever this is, tweeted that it is indeed based off Dragon Excel. whatever that means, right? But then there was a press conference in which they said it's actually dragon based and there will be modifications to the trunk. That's as it was put. Where does that leave us?

I am really excited about the minute possibility that we're going to see a dragon launch on like a Vulcan or like something even weirder like on like a firefly Antares or something like that. that's what I'm excited about. How cursed could it be? It's going to look cursed than when they tried to put Orion on top of a Falcon Heavy.

All right. So that was why I left it off where the last info we had heard, right? And then I did some shows about it or something and then people emailed me or texted me or something. I've received some communications. I forget who and where I can look it up real quick. Your form of journalism, by the way, is the most backwards form where it's like regular journalists, reach out, get information, then publish it. You just like publish something and then everyone calls to you, correct you, and give you the actual information. Yeah, publish it again, baby.

It's a modern, that's why I never say I'm a journalist, right? I do journalistic behaviors occasionally. That's as much as I will claim access to. But somebody was like, hey, I don't think you could just put some extra tanks in the trunk. It's going to need to be more than derivatives of the tank. And then there was a rendering of the trunk with like single big engine on the back of it. Did you see this rendering out there? No.

Who's got that? Somebody's got to put this in the chat. That's interesting. I should have had. There's the one thing I don't have in the show notes. Oh my God. It's an RL10. It's one of the ones from the EUS.

That's a pre-show callback. Appreciate a callback. Support us. $5 a month. Offenom.com slash Discord. Or 25. Either one. Or 25.

A single Super Draco. Hmm. That would be interesting. They do have the Super Dracos. But, oh, that's the other aspect of this, Jake. It's got to be like a really specific thrust amount. Yeah. Right?

It has to be enough thrust that you can do the deorbit that is needed in the time window that is needed. But not too much thrust to tear the ISS apart on the way there. Also, Dragon. plus trunk with no launch for $800 and whatever million dollars, that's a big gap of where that money's going. That's what I want to know. I was wondering that, but I thought about it a little,

and I don't think it's as bad as you think it is, right? Let's assume that a dragon launch, like a Jared Isaacman flight, right, is 200 mil or something? Right, 50 million a seat, four seats, 200 mil, whatever. It's in that range. So dragon by itself is like 150 maybe? Well, it could be more and they are going to make that money back over how many flights. Yeah.

Right. It's not like each launch, you're not buying the full dragon. They produced a dragon and are flying it. Right, because they've got to give it to them. Right, right, right, right. Right. This is them just giving them a dragon service. They're selling all spacecraft.

Now, could you sell a dragon that has been used and attach it to this modified trunk? and this is them selling like effectively you know Hertz is now selling you the Tesla's off lease once they once they're done with their it's a refurbished dragon but why would you build a brand new

like all they need the dragon part is for docking and the whatever else they need the connections for it's not like it's bringing cargo up it's bringing propellant up so you can fill the dragon cabin with more propellant yeah now they say dragon based right I don't think that means it's gonna be a Dragon itself.

Yeah. It might be more like, do you remember the Cygnus derivative for unpressurized cargo? Did you ever see this vehicle that was talked about for years of like, imagine if you, you know, Cygnus is the mod, the pressurized module on top, and then there's that, the service module. Service module, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was an unpressurized version that had a docking port on the front, a bunch of unpressurized cargo, like pallets, basically, and then the same bus.

And so it was like, you know, using all the same avionics and control mechanisms and whatnot. So maybe there's a Mark Watneyed dragon that has like none of the shit that is needed for deorbiting the ISS or none of the shit that is needed for the other stuff that it does. Right. The nose stone taken off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they've stripped everything off this thing. Through the seat down with the window.

Okay. Yeah. I love it. The Mark Wattene dragon. Dragon XS. Yeah. Now the question is if that if that's the direction, right, is that, that Dragon XL? This is going to be the Jake Robbins question. Is whatever we see coming out of this?

Is this Dragon XL? No. No. No way. Still fake? Well, for the explicit purpose that Dragon XL has one job, which is to take pressurized cargo to the gateway. And so if you're taking all the pressurized cargo out of this, then it's just, it's Dragon derived the same way Dragon XL is Dragon derived, right. But what if the, in the way that I just described that Cygnus variant,

what if that is what we see here? Like, what if Dragon XL and this thing have the same route or same

architecture and in one case there's an unpressurized cargo area and in the other case there's support structures to support this.

I don't know. We don't know anything about Dragon Xel. This is the problem. You can't say what this is. What it is or what it isn't. Man.

Yeah. You can put an extra cool, Tangian Dragon and it's Dragon XL. Like, you know, technically, what is it? Yeah. You're right. I feel like this got a little bit more attention than it needed to, to be honest, this story.

Maybe. I'm not sure why. I just have that sense. More attention. How do you feel about it? I think people are missing the forest for the trees on it. How's that for? take.

I think there's a lot of things. So like, okay, is the dragon? Is the dragon Xcel? Who's going to launch it? Okay, how much is it worth? And then never mind the fact that like, guys, the U.S. government just bought a way to shut, throw the ISS into the ocean. Are we talking about that?

I mean, some would say that is the story for sure, right? Yeah. Yeah, there's two parts. The first part is. How long have we been hearing about, oh, or no, ISS is. on, oh, okay, surprise, we renewed it for another four years. Like, we've been doing that for like a decade. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Is this the first time that the deorbit date feel sticky? I guess so, right? That they, there is a time window now. They have established that. They could definitely, um, there is like some stuff in the contract about, you know, we want this delivered by a certain date,

but we might not use it until X or Y date. So there needs to be a window in which it is used. Because I think everyone thinks it will go until 2030. But if they need an extra year or two, then they'll do that. So yeah. And if this hardware is late, then it doesn't fly until whatever. Yeah. But like if we're if we're talking about extending 2030 to 31 or 32 because it takes a year to like decommission it before.

Like that's that's a whole different. That's a whole different story. Then we're going operational until 2040. Yeah. Which is now off the table as far as the story is. concerned you're right you're right 234 might be off the table right like that's what i'm saying right so how's that yeah that's no that that's definitely the main thing right the the only the only uh spacex driven storyline here i think is like all of us assuming this would be a cignis job

and there was the whole do you remember the first time this was put out for um rfp it was like it was cost plus and then it was changed to be the contractor will choose the contracting mechanism so they allowed fixed price and they allowed this hybrid option whatever that was. Right, right. SpaceX hadn't bid the first time, right? That was the thing. Right. And then we don't know yet what the other people bid. So maybe maybe the other competitors all bid cost plus and SpaceX was like,

we'll sell you our dragging off the, you know, back end of our cargo line. Sure. Well, did I read that there, they had initially not included fixed price and they did a round of bidding, but then they, like that, that may be an interesting story too. I think the draft went out without fixed price and then they got feedback that you should include fixed price. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. Which it is funny because this definitely feels like the one that should be fixed price because they're ordering the vehicle. They're not ordering the services. Yeah. Yeah. Because once you deliver the vehicle to NASA, you don't have to stick around to operate it. That's the point.

Yeah. So you have to make the case that inventing it is an unknown, right? Which, yeah, that's a tough case for this. It's like, it's just propulsion and a docking mechanism. Guys, it's not complex. If this is unknown, nothing is known. Yeah, exactly. They know down to the, down to the single digit, how many meters a second you need to provide.

And it's not a lot. Did you read the white paper about this? Yeah, they're going to let it like sink on its own for a while and then yeah. Yeah. And then it needs 57 meters a second. That's where the extension comes from, right? So like they operate it until 2030 and then the, you know, like literally like the power it down and decommission the station before you deorbit it is like just takes a while. It's not a trivial operation, right?

Let's talk about this white paper for a bit and talk about the other things they studied. What were the other options? Interesting. Other options were... So this was a white paper that is put out, and these are all discussed. Uncontrolled re-entry. I love that they included that. That's hilarious. Disassembly and return to Earth. Disassembly and repurposing in Leo. Disassembly and de-orbit in small pieces. Boosting to a higher orbit. Decomposition or fragmenting of the space station while in space. Already happening. Transitioning the space station to a commercial operator. That isn't Boeing, I guess.

Continuing International Space Station operations beyond 2030 is left in there as the last thing. But to your point, the fact that they stated that in this white paper is kind of interesting. Like, here's an option if we go beyond 2030. But it's, I don't know, that story is just really compelling to me. And I wish more people were writing deeper stuff on. Maybe they got to, that's more complex. You've got to talk to a lot of people and figure that out. So maybe someone was working on it.

But like, because the ISS going away is one. thing that's like a big news standpoint, you know, that that dates being sticky is a news point. But also like does this, are we watching the end of the Russian keep the Russians busy space policy era? Like this is this is 1990 till now, you know, that's this is the wall all down. How do we make sure that these guys are building stuff for us and not for North Korea space policy? the entire ISS governance, all of that project, all the cooperation, like all of that stuff is part of the same container of space policy era. Are we at the end of that right now?

That's a huge story, right? That's an interesting way to look at it too, in terms of like, this is the close out of the one era and the transition to the following era. Pre-show we were talking about the gateway again. We got onto the should we cancel gateway. and what we left out of that conversation we were having, we were purely looking at it in terms of what do you do with, if Halo is way behind and EUS is way behind,

then Gateway is way off. And if Starship HLS is going well, then you can't really survive a long gap between the first time we're on the lunar surface and Gateway existing because then we're just like, well, why not just keep going to the surface? The thing we left out is that Gateway, one of the original aspects of that was that it was extended, the ISS

intergovernmental agreement to lunar orbit so that Russia would be part of that. They're not going to be part of Gateway anymore. So that whole thing

is going away. So, yeah, I mean, it is definitely the close-out of that factor. I forgot. I was the same

my GA. Yeah. I don't know. You still blew my mind about the whole E.S. Gateway's conversation. So I'm still reeling from trying to figure that one out.

But what I will say is this, the statement in the white paper about, you know, the idea of boosting eyes as to a higher orbit for not to keep using it, but to keep all the resources in space. This is one thing that you hear a lot of like, we put all this metal and mass up there. Maybe we can mine it and reuse it in the future or whatever, make it a museum. They looked at this and then the concern they were talking about was like the, orbital debris collision type of concerns that they have their general breakdown

and fragmenting at that point and like we don't think the ISS is going to make it another 20 years so we don't want to try to figure out if it's going to make it 2,000 years effectively which I get I get that

yeah and I don't think we're there yet from a capability's standpoint of like being able to economically use that mass. Like, we aren't, the cost to send up new mass is probably pretty similar to the cost to, um, uh,

go up there and use it, right? You're making the recycling argument of like, are you actually getting the material out in a way that is, but in that same regard, uh, like we, let's take a sample return mentality here, right?

We're going to set some aside for future generations that haven't invented something yet. if you boost the ISS into a thousand-year lifetime orbit, like we'll probably figure out what to do with it before a thousand years it's up, right? And if in a hundred years, we might have thought of something different. But will it stay together, is the other concern?

Yeah, I mean, probably, but... I would say probably not. It's like... It's like... You can apart? Isn't it? Yeah. I mean, you could probably like passivate it or something, right? Vent, vent it entirely or something?

Sure. You wouldn't be concerned about the Russian leaks anymore if you vented the whole thing. That's what I'm saying, right? Yeah. It would have the vibe of like a creepy spacecraft that you came across in the expanse, though. What happened here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yikes.

Mothball it. Okay. Just make it a museum. It should be. That's the status part, is that we don't get to have that. But, well, we'll have the on-earth examples of it and whatnot. All right, we've devoted enough time to the ISIS.

It's going to be sunk soon anyway. Do you want to reset your connection before we talk about spacesuits and Starliner? Jerry, I'm fuzzy here. He got a little laggy. He's traveling. He's in the land of oral derricks. They're getting in the way of the connection.

He's going to try to reset it. Let's see if he comes back. We'll see if it comes back. If not, I'm going off on a whole rant about something. So we'll see. What we've got to figure out is if we want to take them to, let's see, are you back? I don't know, man. Who knows?

We'll see. We'll write it out. It might, it might be. We'll ride it out, though. All right, all right. Yeah, give me the next topic. All right. Do you have any strong opinions about Collins' aerospace and their spacesuits?

I'm not sure I'm super motivated by this story, but do you know about it? You can fill you in first, I guess? Yeah. I mean, it's like, I don't know, it's kind of embarrassing, I guess, but the similar redundancy, I guess, like for the win, I don't know, once again. Yeah. I don't know. I know so little about the internals there.

I did get some info on like people that worked at Collins are like bummed about the state of things there. The question is whether NASA will go and replace Collins on the contracts, right? Will they on ramp SpaceX after Charred Isaacman flies in one of these spacesuits? Yeah, yeah. The thing that maybe like concerns me the most is that like I thought that the spacesuit contracts were very. lucrative. They looked like a lot of money. And if Collins is saying like we can't do it for that of money, we're bowing out,

like I have concerns about that, you know? Is that just mean that Collins is like that bad that they can't even manage to program to fit under such a, you know, comfy budget? Or like our space suits is just that expensive, right? Like I don't know what the state is there. I kind of think they're just that expensive. I mean, there's been like, it is knowable how many spacesuits there have ever been. That is a knowable number.

Yeah. There's not many of them, which is why we always thought, felt weird about this, the services-based idea here. It doesn't make any sense. Now, Axiom is using the XEVA, or what is it, the XEMU, what's the thing? Yeah. XEMU, yeah. They're using that as the base with their George Santos approved cover on it. did did that change the economics enough that well i guess what we don't know is how much of a lost

leader the spacesuits are within axiom overall right yeah because they're going to use them for their other programs right and cover with that by way of the funding that they have for that because and i think it's been reported that they lose a bunch of money on the pams the private astronaut missions. I don't know if it's been reported, but pretty sure they do. That's the vibe at least. Yeah. Yeah. Which then leads you to like, well, what are you when you make a money on? Yeah. I mean, that's that's a question about all startups. It's just like you can't trust anything because like all the prices are made up. It's just like, we exist purely on VC funding at

this point. And nothing about what we're doing or the price we're charging makes any sense yet. like we're just trying to survive inventing this stuff and then we'll figure it out the economics afterwards yeah this is why i just don't feel very motivated by the story though i'm like yeah other than it's a symptom of uh of i feel this way about many of the nassar programs at the moment that that the storylines that we have in the media at large of the things that are concerns for NASA don't get the proper prioritization budgetarily until it's clearly like well we should have started this five years ago you know yeah so my my assessment is we'll be in that situation with commercial space stations that the funding doesn't arrive until a couple years too

late we were there with commercial cargo or commercial crew in particular that the funding didn't ramp up for a couple years and then all of a sudden we were we're deorbiting the ISS and giving the other program $100 million or whatever right right right yes the funding for the derby vehicle is way higher than commercial ISS or commercial space station budget lines so they are always in that boat which I think is a like I find me a you know government for you right find me a government program that isn't in that boat of like begging for funding for something but even I say that but I think there are times when NASA could push more forcefully for stuff that does seem like legit needs.

And, you know, are space suits in that, in that scenario? I guess that's the other question I have is like, I never have fully understood why we needed ISS suits. Like, why are the ones we have now not good for another five years? Do you know? Well, I mean... Other than they keep springing leaks, but... They're probably good for five years, especially the last five years of the ISS.

where you're just like, we're not going to fix this thing. We're just going to turn it off and live without it and then put it in the ocean. So maybe that's all connected, right? Maybe like, because wait, so hold on. I always get this straight.

So Collins was doing the ISS suits, right? Mm-hmm. But a year ago, there was that task order to cross over. They said, here's $5 million, do a design study on your suit at the moon and Axiom suit at the ISS. So, Yeah, is there also a component to this if you're Collins and you're looking at the business case and you're like, these suits are dead ends? Because now we're, we're, now it's a sticky date 2030.

Right. Yeah, yeah. You just funded the DORB thing. And who am I going to sell my ISS suit to? Axiom, the other competitor in this program? Basin. Nope. Like, yeah, who's going to buy that, right?

Right. That could be it, right? That, that, I mean, from what I've heard, it was a shit show internally. So separate that out. But you're right. Like if you don't land a deal with Blue Origin, then what other space station are you going to have a suit at? And they don't want a spacesuit. They already said they have a little robot thing that's like not a spacesuit.

Well, yeah. And frankly, if you're Blue Origin, like maybe not now, but eventually on your tech tree, there's got to be a space shooter there. Like you can't be millions of people living and working in space without a spacesuit. It's just like there may not, there may be one. person working on it right now, but one day, Blue Origin is going to have a space period. So, like, that's also not a long-term business solution, right?

Hmm. Yep. Solve that one. All right. Check. This brings us to the discourse around Starliner, Jake, because I don't think anything has changed since you went offline, right? No, it's still, the one thing that I thought would be for sure done by this

episode, like, yeah, we can talk about Starliner. And then how it finally made it home. And it's still freaking up there, you guys. One job, I give you one job, is to bring Starliner home while I was away. All right. Listen, I may have come out in the time since you left as a little bit of a Starliner defender, I think. In some light regard. But I went on a personal journey of that.

I think I, you know, it launched and it got through its initial phase of what the hell's going to happen with this thing. there was a moment where I felt like Starliner was getting more beat up than it deserved. Oh, definitely. It was a fast moment, though. It was a fast moment. I don't feel like that. Oh, you think so? You now deserves it all?

It deserves it quite a bit. I'm hoping next week we go on about this longer because you'll be traveling. I'm trying to get some of our media friends who have been the most cranky about this, to be honest, in to talk about NASA's and Boeing's handling of the, the, the, the, situation because that's we have to separate this into two parts and this is the piece that that if you have only been checking out discord and headlines you may have not necessarily seen this but there are two stories here there is the technical side and then there's the handling of the situation yes yes i'm aware of that yeah and that's a huge divergence i think the

the technical side i thought is a defensible scenario right their their statement is yeah listen we got to the i s i think there's probably more of a story about getting to the ISS that hasn't come out. Could be. Butch and Sunny seem like really nice people, but I would like a count on how many curse words were said between launch and docking. Well, I mean, we saw some of the anxiety just in their communications, right? Yeah.

Well, I'm confusing that with the spacesuit leak one, but that was a whole thing that made sure to talk about. So, but. Different thing. But once they got to, once they got docked, I think there was a moment when the technical decisions become defensible of we're at iss there's nothing really pressing on the schedule side of things for weeks if not months yeah it's a stable state we have this hardware that is the problem that we're going to throw away the big red flag is we don't yet understand the

issues that we have and this is the part that when i found this out is when i've turned the corner back to starliner should get beat up in the way that it's getting up is that the issues they're having now, they still don't have a root cause for. And in some cases, the thrusters they're having issues with are the same ones they had issues with on the last flight. That's the huge concern. Yeah. Yeah.

My take on it was that I'm like a short term defender. Like, okay, guys, like let's park the dragon rescue scenario. Like, come on. Let's take a deep breath and think about what's happening here. Like, of course they're keeping it up here and they should. And exactly like I said, this is the same thruster problem. and we had to throw that service module away, then you're gonna keep this one as long as you goddamn can.

Every test you have 10 times and get as much data as you possibly can. Like, is it the only sane technical decision to go forward to that, right? But long term, program level, not mission level. Mission level, defensive program level, it was bad before we launched and it's still bad. Now we know for sure. That's the thing that I'm kind of stuck on, right? It's like there was nothing before this.

launched, we had a bunch of thoughts about how good of a spaceship this is and I don't know if that needles moved that much. Yeah, and that's I feel even more firmly that my bet, did I make an official

production in the Discord? I forget that Starland will not fly until 2026 again. I think you did, yeah. I think I made you finally. Your first one in the news. Yeah. I still feel pretty comfortable with that because you're right. The way you said that triggered in my brain that like maybe NASA did say that to Boeing.

Like you're staying as long as you can possibly stay and we're not clearing you to leave because we want you to do whatever you could do to make sure you understand what's going on here. And I don't feel like I'm, I don't feel any better about that since the press conferences yesterday or whatever day they were, Tuesday.

Yeah, the longer goes on the more it's like, and they still didn't officially say we found the root cause. was. They did a lot of, they talked about the testing they're doing at white sands with these same thrusters and it didn't sound like they made any progress. It sounded like they did all the things, they injected all the variables that they had on the flight and they still didn't find anything. Yeah, that's not a good, uh, I'm a software engineer, you're a software engineer. We've been there. The test passes. Uh, shit. Okay. Um, all right. Yeah. So, where's

this went wrong in my in my view is just a colossal communications breakdown right two two things you probably didn't listen to the actual press conferences right i did not no okay this one this week i want to hear the i want to hear the it was the one before that that was incredible okay it was incredible because uh they started off and they they didn't even just say we're bummed about how this is all being portrayed they just said this was Boeing and NASA jointly collectively. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, barely, but they said, you all are covering this poorly.

It's like what they said. Now I forget which, I think it was a Boeing official. Maybe, I don't know if it was Mark Knappi, one of the Boeing officials has Google alerts set up for Starliner, which is just not a good way to live your life. I don't think. No, no, it's not. And it was distressed to that all the media was like Starliner is stranded.

No return date insight. Everything's off the rails. The nightly news in the U.S. was covering this story in that regard of like astronauts stuck at the ISS. But they start the press conference by saying, I've seen all these stories. And oh, and they specifically called out Ken Kramer, I think it was. like you did a good job with your story and the rest of y'all are covering this poorly it's like

what are you doing? There's got to be like there's some government PR people like off camera being like do not vilify the press do not pick favorites in the press yeah yeah so that the first question that was asked you know press 1 press star 1 to answer questions

I should remember exactly what it was it was Marsa Dunn from the AP or someone they think I'd go to all the time. And I forget who it was at first. Somebody was like, you know, I get that you're mad about how this being covered, but you've done like one press conference since this thing got to the station. You've done, the last blog post was from last Friday night. You have never let us talk to the astronauts, listed off like all the things that NASA has not allowed access to. And they're like, so you can't put it on us to cover this barely when you've put out zero info.

And then every single other person that got a question in started off with saying, I just want to agree with my colleagues listed all the names that had said the thing. NASA needs to put out more info. We need more access. We need more blog posts. We need more press conferences. And NASA and Boeing just had to sit there and take the comments of like, I agree with all of my colleagues and just take the beating. And it was a hilarious call, honestly.

It was great. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. But my thoughts on that, right, is that if you're NASA, if you're NASA specifically, you have to understand the environment that you are working in. And they do in most scenarios. Whenever they're doing anything regarding SpaceX, they go to great lengths to protect against the like Elon Musk and the headline clickbait.

They try to put big separation between the, The SpaceX mission that's going on, the collaboration with SpaceX, they do a lot of prep around that because they know the media presence that it's going to get from non-space individuals. It is 2024. You need to know the same thing when it's Boeing. Yes. You need to be prepared that any single thing that happens is going to be lumped in the same block of news as whatever the hell happened with a 737 yesterday, the fight that they're

having with the FAA. All of these stories are going to get lumped in. together, you're going to put Starliner in that. Yeah. And to be unprepared for that and then chastise the media and saying, you're covering this poorly. And on the year where Boeing is having an epic meltdown is just, is like NASA being completely ignorant of any and all environmental factors. Yeah, yeah.

I was reading some of the comments on that. And like, it's kind of interesting because it's sort of a failure at every level right now, like, which is why it's such a story, right? Like you have Boeing just like just absolutely messing up the spacecraft. And then you have NASA like trying to defend it, but not really saying what's going on and giving you absolutely no information. And then the media is just like, well, I don't know what's happening,

but this is a Boeing story. So I'm going to just plug in what everybody hopes to hear. Astronauts stranded. They're going to die like NASA in shambles, print like, like, you know, like every level along the way here is like been screwed up. Like, this is, we always talk about this, but like my uncle, who is not a space person, texts me like, man, wow, Boeing really screwed it up. A little sastron not stuck up there is when's Elon coming?

They keep asking, when's Elon coming to get them? That's what, you know, when I have to tell my uncle that Elon's not coming to get them, like everyone is messed up. It's gone all the way down the chain and reached the end in the incorrect state. Yeah, that's my main issue, though, is that it was foreseeable. Like, yeah, a failure of imagination. on a communications level, right? Of like, you know, and I understand when you're prepping for the mission that,

well, we're doing all our homework, everything's going to go great. But, you know, the operation side preps for all the abort scenarios and all the failure scenarios and what do we do if we need to go early? The comm side needed to go for like there's any issue, what do we do? Yeah, NASA comms really needs to do a debrief on this one, right? Like, who was there for the 2022 mission? like that because that was a big disaster too. And like the people,

there's not been someone who worked who's worked since then in the comments part like worked that program all the way through. And it can go, guys, this is a, this is a landmine. We got, we need a team on this right now to like talk through how we're going to

handle this because it's going to get out of control real fast. And it did. It also didn't help that there, there's one line that I think was the major, the major issue is that. they kept sticking to Starliner is cleared to return in an emergency scenario, and they kept sticking to this line. Not, and didn't go further to clarify that they either did or did not clear them for a standard

return, right? Like they, I think there was a line to take there that says, they are cleared for emergency returns. We are not officially signing off on the return yet because we have authorized all this other testing and use of the ISS time. whether or not you want to come out and say we're making them stay to test all this stuff you can go through and they did this yesterday

was like we do this return what's it called like the agency sign off the reviews of returns for demo two for all the dragon missions yeah yeah and the other aspect I should mention is that they message this mission as being a 10 day mission up front that was also an incorrect idea they should have said the goal is 10 days

it could go as long as, right? The fact that they never projected the possibility that this would be extended. Yeah. I can't imagine no one in the ISS program thought about, hey, we might stay for two months. They had to have. They had to have.

They had to plan for it. They had to have supplies on station. They had to know this schedule. They had to know this was a possibility from port utilization on. So that, but that never made its way into the communications around the mission. And I think that that's another root issue here is that they were saying 10-day mission, 10-day mission.

So once you go, oh, we're stuck for two months, then you're stuck. You're not extended for two months. You're stuck for two months. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I guess the off-nominal consultancy group really could hire themselves out to NASA too, right? I mean, I was the one out there defendant Starliner for at least five minutes. So I'm ready to step in again.

Yeah. All right. Are you ready for the grand for now? All right, let's do it. Oh, boy, Jake. I think you did see this video. I think I know which when you're talking about. I still can't believe this.

This was a static fire of the... Of Tjong Long III's first stage static fire. There's just no words for this, Jake. Unbelievable. Look at that thing, go. I'm running this whole video, too, Jake. I'm not stopping it early. Yeah, audio listeners, sorry about this.

You shout out when you want the FTS to fire, Jake. Let me know. Anytime in here. The moment has passed, Anthony. I can't lie to you. Okay. Oh, man. Oh, I can't believe it.

I did not believe this when I saw that this was happening. But where my mind immediately went, Jake, was, can you think of, like, how many launch vehicles can you think of that went less far or less long on their initial flight? I'm trying to think, like, Astra, ABL didn't make it that far, right? Astra, ABL didn't make it that far. There's some others that. definitely just blew up immediately. There was that South Korean one a couple months ago that just like immediately, immediately went.

Yeah. The funny thing is too, is it like, it flew pretty good, I would say, like it did a pretty good job. That's the funniest part is like it like if you didn't tell me that was a static fire and you just like show me the first like 10 seconds, they were like, okay, what launches this? Right? Because it didn't really look that off nominal going up out of the cloud. The best video though. I don't know if you saw this drone

footage of it, but this is the best. This is the best video. The drone uppers like, is this supposed to happen, you guys? Just flew right by. And then it gets a little shaky, right? Yeah. So good.

So good. Yeah, I mean. And then, of course, in truth, my East Hash and it came down on some village later, right? Oh, 100%. Yeah. And they're like, but don't worry. The grid, grid fins will be on the next one.

So, yeah, obviously this is, in the running for the off nominees for sure. Yeah. It's a short lister for sure. I'm sure. The thing that we are alarmed by is everybody out there tweeting it at us and saying this is obviously the winner. Yeah. Forgetting that there were three funny moonlanders this year. This is already a crowded year. So yeah, all the people that said this is the obvious winner, you have very short memories. Your memories do not reach far enough back to the beginning of the year when this pool of nominees begins. It's going to be tricky.

It's going to be tricky. It's going to be a good year. We need a rock solid guess this year. The greatest part of this is, if I can find the tweet, maybe not. Jonathan McDowell tweeted, like, does anyone know the exact liftoff time for Chungmo? He's going to put this in the launch database. Yeah.

So good. Oh, that was fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, you wanted the coordinates and everything. Improct you want. Yeah. Really good. Oh, man.

I can't believe it. It's such funny. It is funny and not, for sure. You know? What was the, it reminds me of the, what was the one where, was it a,

Ariane? I feel like there was a recent flight where they, where someone forgot to like, toggle a thing over or like pull a switch probably launched it like to turn it into like flight mode or something and it feels like that kind of same thing like yeah we just static fire and we just like didn't hook up the the whole down part you know like that's gonna kind of like what is the story

you're thinking of I can't remember now uh let's see I thought you were going to go with the story of the area five that flew like over the entire coast it was it was recent uh hmm Was it was it the intuitive machines launch? Did they have something where they? I mean, they didn't pull the, they didn't activate the one, the laser range finder. Yes.

Yes. Like the hardware was fine. They just didn't turn it on or whatever it was. Remove before flight cable out or the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Kind of feels like that. Where it's like,

it's kind of like the best kind of failure because it's like, the design's fine. We just, it's a good rocket. We just, we just, We just didn't operate it right. I think get the next one out there, you know?

Go for it. I mean, listen, your static fire test stand is blown to shit, so you might as well launch the next one. Do you think somewhere in a closed China TV circuit where we don't get to see they had a bunch of people in front of a thing and someone said, this is why we test? Well, the good news is we got a bunch of our first flight data that we can use to we could to skip a whole mission now. I mean, I do wonder, a question I've never wondered before,

of like, is there FTS flight termination systems, are they installed on static fire units here in the U.S.? I mean, we know Grasshopper had an FTS, but that's obvious because that meant to, that meant to F was part of it. That's a problem. There was no S-S-S-E-S-E. FTS. You know?

It was F with consent, yeah. Right. I don't know. I assume you have to, right? Do you have, I doubt, I don't know. I guess you don't really need a flight termination system. You just have to have. I mean,

with the, with the, with the checks that, like, a lot of the things where we have, like, engines, you know, just testing, if it flew off, it would disconnect from its fuel source.

So it's like, okay. Right. But like the stands where Falcon 9s get, test fire. Yeah. do they how much i don't know man how much fuel do you put in it when you do that uh apparently a good bit yeah that was a lot because the the thrust away ratio looked like pretty accurate you know

it didn't it didn't go crazy yeah hmm i don't know man that's really good that's that's a good question. I do love that most of the off nominees this year are things that have happened in Kerbal very specifically. Right? Like the Japanese moonlander looks like the start screen of Kerbal. We've all landed a moonlander that's tipped over before. I guess we haven't technically done like a Peregrine, but we definitely have screwed up our staging and put the launch, the launch supports at the same stage. That's how we usually do it. Let's be real. We usually do. with that way. You don't need any spin-up time on Curbel Engines. Only when I'm doing

in realism, yeah. Yeah, only when you're in KSP history mode. Do you do it? Start distrust at 0%, activate the stage, ramp up to 100, and then hit the clamps. That's what you do, man. Yeah, so good. Yeah. I don't know. Oh, the only

other thing that happened, Jake, is this is the last thing I'll put on the way out is Blue Origin filed some paperwork to limit the number of starship launches at the Cape per year or suggested it as a as a thing this is all related to the methane keep-out zone stuff we talked about right my number one thought when I saw this story come across was damn we're good at our job we were presaged that by like three days nailed it yeah yeah crushed it I didn't even

cover it because I was like whatever we've talked about this you'll like too but I mean it's honestly, like, if you're all these people out there, you got to be a little bit. It's one of those things where it's just like, worried about it. This is just jockeying for position right now. Like, it's going to get solved. Like, we can't. We, like, they're all right. You can't shut down the entire cape every time you want to launch a rocket.

So, like, this is all of your problem. And they're just kind of like, they're just trying to edge another whatever. Okay. All right. They are all right. Honestly, like, if I'm them, I'm like, man, you got your own launch site. Go, go use that thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Why are you coming to this one? It would be nice to see them all working together, be like, how can we collectively put all of our methane systems into the same pool and figure out how bad it is and so that we can all fly more frequently? You know, that would be the smart way to do it. But these people are not really known to work well together. As far as I'm concerned, Jake, we've offered the solution to one of the three people concerned here. So we're the only ones actively working to make all of them work together nicely.

this time it's a SpaceX sniper hitting the ULA rocket and just got to find out what happens Yeah How much could it cost? It definitely costs less money To take a Pathfinder Tankage from one of these vehicles

Take it to Mojave Blow it up And see what happens That's definitely less expensive Than whatever the plan is right now Look they can all work together We can take a Starship first stage A ULA sniper

and a Blue Origin West Texas field, and they can just knock this all off together in a joint mission. That's Unity. That's a Unity ticket right there for 2024. That's it. We've solved it. If Blue Origin buys ULA, will it be the Blue Origins neighbor? Depends if it's like an aquire at that point.

It'll be the Blue Origin sniper just like the Boeing Space Shuttle or whatever. That's totally true, man. God, it's funny. Oh, man. Okay. That's what we got. All right. Do you feel caught up?

I feel better. Yeah. Yeah. I got to process some of these things a little more, though. I feel like that's just a lot of news where like you, maybe you can process every individual story. But just like we did, we're like, hey, is the Collins spacesuit thing related to the ISS deorbit thing? And you got to like, you got to make those, you got to connect those synapses, you know? Halo and EU.

if you were listening to the pre-show over at Discord, off nom.com slash Discord. We're trying to sort that one out. The short story? It's all 10s all the way down, baby. It's just, I realize now, though, Jake, that you're now going offline for a couple weeks. So we're going to have to do this again,

and I'm terrified of how much news will now happen. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this time it'll be in July, at least, or it's like not a bunch of people rushing out their stories before the summer, right? We're going to, I should mention, We're going to be on a little bit of a TikTok here in terms of who's out and catching each other up. I should mention this.

I've not said this on the show yet, but I am having a second child in late August to early September. So Jake will be catching me up at some point when I'm magically not on the show anymore. So it's all the way down. One week is going to happen. This is going to turn on and there'll just be an empty space there and I'll talk to myself for an hour. Gets me confidence that New Glenn's launch in late August. I'll say that. Yeah.

That's the over-under. My second kid or New Glenn. Which one you've taken happens first? Your kid for sure, yeah. Yeah. If New Glenn happens first, I'll name him, Glenn. We already picked the name. It's not Glenn.

Glenn Glengelo. That's the worst name. I just, I've actually been thinking. thinking about, this is a kicker for the way out, Jake, I've been thinking about Blue Origins namings and how, like, do they think they can do everything they ever want to do with New Armstrong? Is that the last one? Is New Armstrong real? It's kind of in the same bucket as Dragon X-L, let's be honest. I don't know, but they then decided that whatever the third, the fourth, the fourth thing they

build, someone else gets the name. Like, they've set themselves up, betting that there will be someone on Mars that they can name a thing after before they get to their fourth rocket. it. And otherwise, they've got to cook with New Armstrong all the way until then. Yeah, could be. stressing me out. That's stressing me out. I'll be honest.

Or they just forget it altogether and just go with like, because they kind of skipped it, right? They got, they got. New Glover. Yeah, maybe. Let's go. They got Shepard and Glenn are two Mercury guys originally. Yeah.

And then they kind of like skipped Gemini and went straight. Well, I guess you cars. Well, it's just milestones. Yeah. Space orbit moon. Programs, is it? No, it's space orbit moon. All right.

They skipped Yuri. That's the problem. That's because they needed two names. They would have just one name. Yeah, I don't know if they made orbit. It's the whole thing. It would be pretty hard to jockey Congress with the new Gagarin rocket. Be problematic.

All right, y'all. Next week, like I mentioned, I have some. some media friends join in to talk about NASA being mad at us. So that'll be fun. I'm excited. I will watch it. It'll be in the evening for me and a pub in Ireland and I'll watch it with a Guinness and troll you from the chat.

Leo N. Wright, hopefully. All right, everybody. All right, y'all. We'll see you later. Bye. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, end of death.